Читать книгу In the Course of Human Events - Mike Harvkey - Страница 16

Clyde made a point of getting to Liberty Ridge half an hour early on Wednesday. Troy was busy with family the next two days and Clyde had no obligations except a four-hour shift at Walmart the next day, for which he would make $31 before tax. Tax would take fifteen, twenty percent, say, $5. So, $26. Just to get there and back would take four gallons of gas. At $3 a gallon, that was $12. Subtract $12 from $26 and you’re left with $14. How much money will Walmart make in those same four hours? Clyde wondered. In Liberty Ridge, he waited in his truck until Tina came out in her bare feet. “You here to see me,” she called across the street, “or my dad?”

“Both,” Clyde said. It was enough of an answer to bring Tina across the remaining ground. Even though no one drove in the Ridge but the Smalls, Tina looked both ways before she made it to Clyde’s door. “Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” he said, but Tina didn’t laugh.

“I thought I was your girlfriend,” she said.

Clyde didn’t say anything for a moment, then told her, “You are.”

Tina shook her head. “You didn’t even call me back.”

“You leave me a message?”

Tina shrugged. Her fingernails, bright pink, clung to the last inch of Clyde’s window. “Didn’t think I’d have to.”

“A friend came up from Nashville,” Clyde said.

“A friend?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of friend?” Tina said.

“My best friend. Troy.”

“Troy.”

“Yep.”

“Troy a girl?”

“A girl?” Clyde said. “Uh, no. Troy’s a dude. Ain’t seen him in two months, either.”

Tina nodded and looked out at the street. “I guess that’s all right,” she said, bringing her gaze, those bright emerald eyes, to his face. “Wish you’d called me back, though.”

Clyde had had about enough of this. He hoped Tina wasn’t one of those feminist types, wanting to keep his balls in her bedside drawer. He saw on his watch that it was close to six and grabbed his gym bag. He bowed out the window so that his forehead fell upon Tina’s knuckles. “I’m so solly, belly belly solly,” he said, and Tina cracked up and stepped back so he could get out.

They kissed in the middle of the street and Jay, who obviously had some kind of radar for catching these moments, yelled from the doorway, “No kissy face in training, Clyde-san. Class starts in four minutes.”

“Osu!” Clyde yelled, hurrying into the yard.

It was Clyde’s first full class, and he was the only one there. The first hour he faced Jay doing kihon. When they were done, Jay said they’d thrown a thousand reps. “We train until we’re exhausted, then the real training begins,” Jay said. They did conditioning drills next, and the swollen middle knuckle of Jay’s hard right hand tormented the exact same rib every time. Push-ups and sit-ups and squats followed, until Clyde’s arms and legs wouldn’t stop shaking and he had to use the railing to pull himself up the basement stairs after they’d bowed out. When Jay asked Clyde if he could stay for supper, he didn’t hesitate. In the kitchen, Jan and Tina were at the table. Tina smiled at Clyde. He ran a forearm across his face and felt sweat pooling around his bare, dirty feet on the linoleum floor. “Tina,” Jay said, slipping a cigarette out of his pack of Winstons on the counter, “Get Clyde a towel and show him where he can shower.”

Tina jumped up and pulled Clyde by the sleeve of his gi. In the bathroom she kissed him and wiped her nose. “Sweat much, buddy?”

Clyde had made the drawstring of his gi pants so tight he thought he was going to have to cut it to get them off. Finally he worked some give into it. Just as he was reaching into the shower, Jay yelled, “Tina Louise,” and Tina squealed right outside the door.

Before supper, Jay read Clyde the letter he’d written for him to the IRS.

I have received your angry notice informing me of a debt you claim I owe for mistakes which originated in your own office. As a law-abiding, tax-paying, hardworking citizen of these United States, I have chosen to execute my inalienable right to liberty—in this case financial liberty—by refusing to pay you another red cent. In fact, you should pay me $862 for the emotional distress and turmoil your letter has created in me and my family, which is sizeable and could be documented through the proper medical and legal channels. Furthermore, you should be ashamed of yourselves for pursuing honest, hardworking tax payers to cover clerical errors built on government corruption and inefficiency. I for one refuse to take part in your many global wars and other criminal efforts being perpetrated by the New World Order AKA the United States of America AKA the plaything of the Fed. Feel free to do your evil work, go ahead and send a collection agency to seize my assets; they are few, and easy to defend, as I am legally armed and will act in a manner accorded by law when an unlawful person trespasses and attempts to steal that which is mine.

Sincerely,

Clyde Eugene Twitty, citizen

Jay dropped the paper, a big grin on his face. “Pretty good, huh?”

Clyde had no idea what to say. Part of him would have loved to send a letter like that to the goddamn IRS. But he worried that if he did he’d get in trouble. He didn’t think he was prepared, as Jay seemed to think he was, to enter into a shootout over his truck.

“Dad!” Tina said. “Clyde ain’t ready for your craziness.”

“Daughter-san,” Jay said, holding up a finger of warning. “You ready for my quote-unquote craziness, Clyde, or aren’t ya?”

“Well, that’s not the way I’d put it . . . ”

“See?” Tina said. “He ain’t ready.”

“Let poor Clyde fight his own battles, Jay,” Jan said.

Jay balled up the letter and said, “All right, mama.” He lit a cigarette and chucked the pack at Clyde who took one out and lit it with Jay’s lighter. Jay pointed the cigarette at Clyde then. “Write your own letter.”

Clyde huffed.

“I mean it,” Jay said. “This part of training. Write your own letter, and let me see it ’fore you mail it.”

“Osu,” Clyde said.

During supper Jay opened the first bottle of Rebel Yell. In the front room an hour later he opened the second. Pouring from that bottle, he raised his glass and said, “To the new couple!” Everyone but Tina shot the whiskey down. Tina sipped hers, making a face and giggling. It seemed that the Smalls didn’t give two shits about laws of any kind. Tina, at sixteen, drank alcohol every single night. By ten o’clock, the whole family was sharing cigarettes and telling jokes, their shoes upturned on the carpet. A little later they split into two couples, Tina and Clyde in the front room by the wall of bookshelves stuffed with decades of National Geographic, Playboy, Penthouse, and Black Belt magazines, Jay and Jan in the TV room, kissing so wetly that they sounded like two dogs licking themselves clean.

Pressing Clyde into the floor, Tina whispered for him to keep his eyes open while she touched them with her tongue. She filled his ears with slobber and sucked it out in loud snaps that made him flinch, ground her pubic bone into his sore pecker and freed her bra with a springy snap beneath her sweatshirt. She lifted the shirt to her neck, grabbed one of her boobs, and shoved it into his mouth. Clyde had never had a girl’s tongue in his ear, and he’d sucked on some titties only once before, the night with that married woman, who’d fucked Clyde again and again on his bed, her pale pink nipples swinging just above his nose.

Just then Jan hollered up the stairs, “Y’all keepin it clean, ain’t ya?”

Tina giggled. “Yep,” she said.

“Clyde?” Jan said.

“Uh, yes ma’am,” he said, Tina’s cold, wet nipple against his temple.

“Clyde-san?” Jay said.

“Yes, sir, absolutely.”

“Better be.”

Tina stared at the top of the stairs. Without turning to Clyde, she smashed her enormous bare breast into his face. For a moment, he was drowning in tit.

Sometime later she jumped up and released a sob that sounded like she’d been punched in the neck. She ran out of the house. Clyde had no idea what had happened.

“Tina?” Jan said from downstairs.

“Uh,” Clyde said, wiping his mouth and trying to hide the erection pressing tight and hot against his zipper. “She, uh,” he said, as Jan climbed the stairs.

She came into the room dragging her sweatshirt over her naked breasts. “What happened?”

“She just,” Clyde said, getting unsteadily to his feet. The bottle of Rebel Yell lay on its side, a stain on the carpet around it. “Uh, jumped up.”

Jan looked out the screen at the yard. “Tina?” she called. Tina didn’t respond. Clyde could hear her sobbing out there somewhere. “Here we go,” Jan said.

For the two hours that followed, Clyde sat with Jay on the frozen cement step with an afghan over their legs. Whiskey, cigarettes. Clyde worried about what the Smalls would think had happened, what Clyde had done to upset their only daughter, but there seemed to be no judgment at all. He got the feeling that he could have gone to his truck and driven off without Jay or Jan thinking it was a bad move. Twice in that first hour, Jan returned to the porch for a drink and a smoke. “She’s never had a boyfriend before, Clyde,” Jan said. “She’s afraid you’re gonna hurt her.” Jan smiled sweetly, smoking her cigarette, and went back out. The next time she returned she said, “Clyde, you are either the loyalest son of a bitch the world’s ever seen, or the dumbest!” Drunk, exhausted, blue-balled, and confused, he didn’t know what he was.

“He in too deep to git out now, mama,” Jay said. “Way too deep.”

Jan looked at Clyde in a way that he would come to learn only she ever did. “I think you’re right,” she said. “Clyde is here to stay.”

That night Jay told Clyde about how the Smalls had ended up alone in Liberty Ridge. Technically the house belonged to Jay’s parents. What had happened was, after laying the macadam grid, lighting every damn street, and punching half the basements, the developers had tilled up relics from Civil War times. A whole mess of important shit, some lawyer said. At that point, they’d finished and sold exactly one address, the model house, bought by one Curtis Duane Smalls of Grandview, Missouri. The Liberty Ridge Development Corp. had tried to buy it back, but Jay, acting on his father’s behalf, said no, thank you. Since then the whole thing had been stuck in the courts. According to Jay, it was typical government bullshit and made as much sense as a dog in a whorehouse. The developers had even threatened to sue, backed by the city council, and Jay had written a letter to the council quoting Patrick Henry and citing the ever-increasing power grab of the United States government. Fifty open basements had since filled with standing water, mosquitoes, and garbage thrown in by the trespassing boys of Molasses Gap. There was a dark line of trees in the distance that Jay pointed out to Clyde, the border between the two communities. “Slavery,” Jay said, “were the worst and dumbest thing to ever happen in this country, you know that?” Clyde nodded. “If the goddamn Europeans had had a decent fuckin work ethic they wouldn’t a needed to pilfer Africa of its babies and the Negro would never have set foot on American soil. Ever since they have, their presence is a fuckin cancer, just spreads and spreads, from the south to the north, from the city to the country. They only eleven percent of the population today but they’re about a hundred percent of the problem.” Jay jumped up then, disappearing into the house. When he came back, he had an AR-15.

“Damn,” Clyde said. He’d seen assault weapons at gun shows but never held one.

Jay handed it over. “Ain’t loaded,” he said, nodding at a clip on the step. The gun was light as hell. Clyde sighted at a distant piece of machinery and gave it back. Jay slapped the clip in and pointed it at the woods. “Pow,” he said. “One of these days they get the idea.” He lowered the gun and got a new smoke lit. “Hell.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “They only the tip of the iceberg.”

By the time Jan talked Tina in, it was after three and Clyde was drunker than he’d ever been. He’d never drunk whisky before—only beer—and he had no idea how mean it could be. He and Tina made up in the yard and then Clyde puked into the mulch around one of the saplings and lay down on the damp, cold ground. In the light of day he woke on the sofa in the front room with Jay crouched beside his face, whispering, “Cryde-san . . . Cryde-san . . . ”

“What time is it?” he said, pushing the blanket down. He was in a clean pair of karate pants and a T-shirt he didn’t own. His throat burned, stomach threatened, a headache began at the base of his skull, crawled around his temples, and dug in behind the eyes. It would have been easier to throw up than not to.

“Time for work, Cryde-san . . . time for work.” Clyde had forgotten all about Walmart, but Jay hadn’t.

As Clyde got ready to go, Jan made coffee in a pair of sagging panties and a torn T-shirt, no bra. She handed Clyde a cup and held his face when she kissed his cheek with warm, smoky breath. Clyde liked Jan and he liked Jay, a lot. He wasn’t sure about Tina. He’d never known a girl like this, sweet and sexy one minute, shithouse crazy the next, like Jekyll and Hyde. But Jay’s words from last night came to him: in too deep, that’s what he was.

“What time’s your shift over?” Jay asked him.

It took Clyde a moment to answer. His brain felt like potted meat. “Eleven thirty, I think.”

“See you in class tonight?”

Clyde groaned. “Osu. Might need to recuperate a little bit.”

Jay blew across his coffee mug, steam shaking across the top. “Mm,” Jay said. “You know what ‘osu’ means?”

Clyde realized he didn’t.

“Comes from ‘oshi shinobu,’” Jay said. “‘Oshi’ means to persevere and ‘shinobu’ means while being tested. If you ain’t gonna do that, then don’t use the word.”

Clyde felt his chest tighten. “Oh,” he said. Jay had told him to say “osu” for everything.

Jay waved a hand. “Guess I see you when I see you.”

“No,” Clyde said. “Sounds good.”

“Clyde-san,” Jay said, getting close enough that Clyde could hear him breathing. “Don’t do me no favors. I’ll train with you or without you. Don’t matter to me.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Strength through repetition, Sosei said. Sosei said it takes a thousand days to master your basics. I don’t believe in part time, Clyde. Part time is half-assed.”

“Osu,” Clyde said.

“Oh, and, uh,” Jay said, “just use my computer to write that letter after class.”

Clyde nodded. The truth was, he figured he’d just have to pay the fucking IRS. They seemed serious. But he didn’t have a fraction of what they were asking for, even with two jobs. But Jay seemed pretty set on it, so he’d give it a try.

After punching in at Walmart, Clyde went to Pets, walking with a minor limp and carrying a general air of abuse. When Esther saw him she hugged him and said, “You poor kitty, what happened?” She inspected his bruised forearms and made the run to Starbucks herself, without asking for money. She came back with two venti cups, hers black, his sweet and light, and slipped her arms around Clyde’s waist, laid her cheek between his shoulders and said, “Sorry about the other night.” Clyde nodded and Esther squeezed him harder. It made his stomach lurch. “You know what I bet’d make you feel better?” she said.

“Huh uh.”

“A blow job.”

Clyde’s breath came out in a cough.

Esther split away, picked something up from one of the shelves. “I’m serious,” she said, looking in a murky tank. “Whenever you want, okay? Just come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t we go out and sit in my truck a while.’ I’d love to do that for you.” Clyde nodded and Esther smiled like he’d just made her day.

By the end of his shift Clyde didn’t feel much better. He’d accomplished almost nothing. Pets was still a ruin. Just before the shift ended, Tina appeared in the mouth of the aisle. “Found him,” she said. Her eyes skipped to Esther the next aisle over and narrowed. Tina’s mom came around with a shopping cart. Clyde had been trying to put a fish tank together and Esther was pricing chew toys.

“Mrs. Smalls,” Clyde said, looking from Tina to Esther and back. Tina didn’t like that, didn’t like that at all. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Well, Tina’s working,” Jan said with a crooked grin.

Tina flapped a notepad and said, “Brand strategy stuff.”

“And I’m getting groceries. You like Mexican food, Clyde?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said.

“I was thinking about making tacos tonight,” Jan said. “How’d you feel about that?”

Clyde scratched his eyebrow so he could glance at Esther. She was pretending not to watch. “Sounds good,” he said softly.

“Figure you might be hungry after class,” Jan said.

“And after last night, thanks to you, we need more whiskey,” Tina said, all her teeth showing. Clyde couldn’t tell if she was joking. But then she took a bunch of little girl steps in his direction, as if her knees had been bound with electrical tape, and kissed Clyde on his cheek. “I better not see you flirting with that little blonde slut,” she whispered in Clyde’s ear. “Don’t forget who your girlfriend is, buddy.” She leaned back and smiled. Loudly, so that anyone close by could hear her, she said, “Okay, honey, see you tonight.”

Tina and Jan went off in search of taco shells and Clyde returned his attention to the tank. Esther didn’t say anything until he’d removed his name tag and punched out and wandered back to Pets for reasons he didn’t entirely understand. “Wow,” she said when she saw him.

“What?” he said.

Esther shook her head, her mouth tight like she’d rather not say.

“What?” Clyde said. “Come on.”

“Just,” Esther said. “Kinda pushy, right?”

“You think?”

“Uh, yeah. Showing up while you’re at work asking you what you want for dinner?”

“Huh.” Clyde knew she was right and looked between aisles for signs of them.

“Pretty,” Esther said.

“What?”

“Your girlfriend’s pretty.” Esther stamped a chew toy with a tag.

“Mm.” Clyde looked around. Tina and Jan were very likely still in the store. “She’s, uh . . . ”

Esther was watching him. “If she’s not your girlfriend, you better tell her, like, tonight, because as far as she’s concerned, Clyde, the two of you are a done deal.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Guess so. I, on the other hand.” She splayed a hand near her throat.

“Are about as complicated as it gets!” Clyde hadn’t meant to say it and cringed now that he had. But Esther burst out laughing, and her face, when laughing like that, relaxed, her blond hair tumbled, her eyes drifted shut, and those long white lashes touched the tender skin of her cheeks.